Tile-mounting board.



C. J. HENRY.

TILE MOUNTING BOARD.

APPLICATION FlLED N0v.23. 1917.

1,280,730 g Patented Oct. 8, 1918.

INVENTOR ATT NEY warrant srarns Parana? caries.

oHAELEs a. HENRY, or PERTH AM BQY, NEW JERSEY. 1

TILE-MOUNTING BOARD.

' To all whom it may concern:-

' Be it known that 1, CHARLES J. HENRY, a citizen of the United States, residing at PerthAmboy, in the county of Middlesex and State of New J ersey,have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Tile- Mounting Boards, of which the following is a specification.

The present invention comprises a device for creating decorative effects which require great accuracy in arranging the ceramic tiles, or similar materials, of which said decorations are formed.

-My invention will be set forth with greater particularity in the appended claim and a complete understanding of my new inven tion may be had from the following description taken in connection with the accomp-anying drawing of which Figure 1 is a top view of the board, and Fig. 2 shows in a somewhat enlarged proportion, a part of a vertical section on line A-B of Fig. l.

As shown in both these figures the board consists of a plane base 1 made of a metal or other solid material which resists corrosion by the oxygen of the air or other corrosive agents, nor subject to deformation by other influences of the atmosphere, for instance, by moisture, change of temperature or other factors. 7 a

The base 1 is surrounded by an elevate rim 2 of the same material as base 1. The inner field limited by rim 2 is subdivided into a great number of little fields by means of a plurality of ribs 3, which are of the same'material as the base and rim. I have already stated that the material of which all these parts of my new invention are made, must have certain definite chemical and physical properties and I further beg to state that all parts are homogeneously united with each other whenever two or three of them oin, as is'shown by an inspection of the drawing; the materials answering such requirements are for instance certain metals, especially aluminum, tin, zinc,

iron under certain conditions, for instance when coated with tin or zinc, or alloys which are not liable to corrode and sometimes have an almost negligible coefficient of expansionf or other nonmetallic materials capable o passing from a certain plastic state into solidity, for instance the condensation products of formaldehyde and phenol, of which o bakelite is the best known, of hardrubbe'r, of celluloid or similar materials.

Specification of Letters Patent.

It is thus evident which characteristic properties the material coming in question, must possess and also that one could find a greater. number of metalsand non metallic Patented Oct. 8, 1918.:

Application filed November 23, 1917. Serial No, 203,545. i

substances which would answer thefpurpose of my invention; as many such substitutes,

would, however, be prohibitive owing to their price, I have enumerated only those which can easily be obtained in the market.*

The board described below is preferably made in one cast from a mold ora die by pressing'it from a metal sheet; for r'easons further pointed out below,"I prefer to make the whole board from aluminum by casting it in a correspondingly arranged mold. It is obvious that the lateral circumferences o f 'the'fields are thus formed by a continuous net of ribs 3 homogeneously joined with each other and at the outskirts.

also with rim 2, both the ribs and rim being then also homogeneously joined to the'bas e 1.

The operation consists in filling the little fields of conventional form with ceramic tiles of corresponding shape and of such measurements as to fill the field as accurately as possible; all the tiles are laid bottom downward. After all have been filled the upper side of the tiles is given a coat of glue and then a piece of heavy paper is pressed upon it. As the paper absorbs the moisture ,of'the glue, the paper stifi'ens very quickly so that the whole board can be turned over-to cause. the simultaneous discharge of all the tilewhich now firmly adhere to the paper.

' "To facilitatethis turning over of the board reinforcing ribs 4: are provided at the bottom of the board; these ribs run either parallel to the sides or have diagonal connections between said parallel ribs which also allow the operatorto easily put his hand.

under the board when turning same;

The set of tiles thus obtained is usually 1 wide and 2 ft. long and is called a slab.

These slabs are the elements by which the decorative effect of 'fioors, occasionally also of walls is obtained. In setting, or affixing slabs to the floor, one spreads an even layer of a binding mass, usually some kind of a cement mortar, on the floor and then laysa slab on. top of same; in order to accomplish cement and ofier a smooth clear surface when one pulls oli the paper which had previously been softened with waterto dissolve I the glue.

It is in the almost mathematically correct" lines of the interstices, which are substan tially congruentall through the design, and

the very considerable reduction of the cost of the slabs used in the production of this flooringthat the meritsfof my invention consists. .r

thetiles themselves, whether they are round,

square, rectangular, hexagonal, octagonal or any other shape, one mayglve to thetiles. Already a plain wh te flooring admits of a great number of designs by giving the tile a particular shape. AheXagonal tile having each. side about 1 in. longis very much in favor for tiled floors in bath rooms, halls, kitchens, operating rooms, in hospitals, etc. Inspecting such a floor composed of little hexagonal or rectangular tiles one will notice,

in glancing along one of, the lines formed by thea'adjoining tiles, that within a yards length the interstices formed by the adjoin ing tiles change from a hairs width to more than the diameter of a match; one will even find occasionally, that rather considerable deviations from thedesirable width, which should not be more than the thickness of a playing or visiting card, continue for the length of a foot or even more. It stands to reason that the beauty of such a floor is very much marred by such defects, especially as they become more visible in length of time, for the cement filling, originally as white, or atleast nearly as White as the tile itself turns black as its pores absorb the dirt when the floor is washed. 1 j

Occasionally-one notices that the intersticesin certain places are wider, or narrower, as'the case may be, than those in another part of the floor and such unevenness is of course very easily noticed and renders the floor also rather unattractive.

All these shortcomings displayed by finished tile with" slabs made with the mounting boards or devices used by the prior art are avoided by making the slabs with my new invention described above. llheprior art uses simply a wooden board into which a system ofslits are' cut according'to the decorative design one wants to produce. Qwing toQthe curved or bent lines required by the various designs it standslto reason that it was not easyto 'cut the slits accurately all along the line, especially in Y the corners. Moreover in these slits, short steel ribs,'little higherthan one quarter inch, were mounted, to hold the various tiles, thus facilitating the laying out of the desired design, whereupon the tiles were glued and covered with papers "similarly as in the application of my new invention. But it is easily seen that such wooden devices can never produce a decorative effect which will display that almost mathematicalaccuracy which is absolutely necessary to make a floor, or wall, which will please the eye. To understand this impossibility, I need only mention that the boards are twice as long as wide, and being of wood, the board of course will 'eX-, pand considerably in length by the influence of moisture and-as the fields adapted to receive the tiles are limited by the steel rail, the expansion of the board will of course widen the interstice between two adjoining tiles and thus cause the irregularities so often noticed in the lines of floors.

Because of the influence of moisture the board willof course expand also along its width and this is often for the worst, be: cause the board is given to warp, whereby the beauty of the produced article is afiected in a much greater degree as the floor in such cases is disfigured by even greater and more noticeable irregularities. Such dislocation of thetiles is avoided by my invention, for the solid unity, between the board as the one limitationdownwardly, and the rim and ribs as border partitions sidewardly, is the essen tial' factor achieving this end.

Inasmuch as the steel ribs in the wooden mounting boards of the prior art are only pressed by the hand into the fine slits cut by a knife, it is but natural that the steel ribs often loosen and fall out ofsaid slits when theboards are turned to discharge the tiles from the board. The workman has to-put them back and each such resetting of these ribs widen the slit so that the tendency of theribs to fall out of the slits increases con tinuously; naturally the workman loses much time in picking up every single rib and resetting same into the board. .Moreover in case the board has warped, the workman has oftentocorrect the finished slab because tiles filling fields in the arped part of the board did not lie fiat and are so badly dislocated that theworkmen must singly reset each of these dislocated tiles by manipulations requiring great care not to tearthe paper which otherwise would cause further loss of time. It is evident that theinherent shortcomings of the wooden parts otthe device of the prior art are a considerable handicap for the workman and cause him much lossof time. My new invention is entirely free of such handlcaps and therefore the workman can turn out a very much' greater-number of slabs, for aside from saving all the loss of time, my new invention causes him also less fatigue, because my tile mounting board described above is of extremely light Weight and can therefore be handled more freely. and easily.

It is of course understood that my new tile mounting board enabling me to produce floors with practically mathematically accurate interstices between the tiles, all over the floor, canalso be produced by combining for instance a metal board With a rim and ribs of various metals, provided they'have fields of the board and the ribs may be fastened to the board of the rim respectively by elding same electrically together or it will be Within the spirit of my invention if said steel ribs are carefully soldered to the board and rim respectively, the factors caus ing a -mechanical disfigurement of'the de-' sired product being thereby also practically avoided.

I claim: .a 7 A tile mounting board of conventional form, said board being homogeneously made of material resistant to atmospheric actions and having an exceedingly low and uniform 'coeflicient of expansion.

CHARLES J. HENRY.

Copies of this patent may be obtained for five cents each, by addressing the "Commissioner of Patents, 7

Washington, D. O. 

